Yes, you do need such a utility. What brand of hard drive is it? Most drive vendors supply a utility that reads out the SMART data.

0

hhhengAuthor Commented: 2002-04-17

Hdd is "quantum fireball". Local vendor don't market this brand anymore. If the utility is not available, I'm thinking of changing the BIOS for SMART from "Enable" to "Disable". Any problem with this ?

Selecting the right managed security services platform to grow your business can be a huge undertaking. Join WatchGuard and Frost & Sullivan in an upcoming webinar as we dive into the key elements of selecting a vendor platform and partnership to fuel a successful MSSP business.

Well the problem is that Windows isn't very smart about S.M.A.R.T. Windows never reports any problem with a drive until there is an unrecoverable error. By then, it's far too late.

The S.M.A.R.T. utilities from Maxtor and other drive vendors need to be run periodically to query the S.M.A.R.T. database on the drive and report to you any events that should be a concern. But if you don't run the utility, you'll never know....

It's too bad that Microsoft doesn't build S.M.A.R.T. support into Windows but for whatever reason they don't. Probably because it wasn't invented by them...

There are software programs that you can run from within the OS that will monitor the SMART status on your harddrive. Norton Utilities used to have this functionality, I'm sure there are others, such as these:

Featured Post

WatchGuard acquires Percipient Networks to extend protection to the DNS layer, further increasing the value of Total Security Suite. Learn more about what this means for you and how you can improve your security with WatchGuard today!